Abu Dhabi: Sixty per cent of schools in the country are to become better equipped to educate both gifted and disabled pupils by 2013, UAE Minister of Education Humaid Mohammad Obaid Al Qutami said Saturday.
Al Qutami said a modern curricula was being developed to help include special education in normal classrooms.
"By 2013, 62 per cent of UAE schools will be able to effectively incorporate adequate learning environments for special needs students within the overall school system," he added.
The minister was speaking at the International Conference of Special Education, in which local and international teachers gathered to discuss various ways of nurturing and including special needs children within regular classrooms.
Gifted children, as those at the two-day conference agreed, are those who excel and perform better than their peers in at least one field.
Important cause
"Inclusion of students with special [needs] is the most important contemporary cause in international education. The ministry, therefore, aims to make [the] scholastic environment more supportive for gifted students, and this conference allows the required exchange of expertise and creativity," Al Qutami said.
An inclusive classroom is one in which children with special needs — both pupils with disabilities and gifted pupils — work and study with "average" or "normal" children.
Dr Joyce Pittman, associate clinical professor at Drexel University who spoke at the conference, told Gulf News that an inclusive classroom helped children — at all learning levels — perform better.
"Students with greater learning capacity motivate their peers to do well, and I am happy to see that the UAE is working steadily to implement this model," Dr Pittman said.
She also recommended the use of smartphones and laptops, to provide differentiated learning to children with individual learning capacities within the same classroom.
"Otherwise, gifted children can begin to underperform because they are not adequately challenged or motivated," she said.
